I was out of town this past week visiting a friend and among other things, we watched the first 8 episodes of ThamePo, which had me thinking again about why I think that show is so successful at what it does. A large part of it is how clearly written all the characters are—sure, the Oner staff, Baifern, and Gam aren’t that deep, but we don’t need to know that much about them for the story or their involvement to feel meaningful and we do get little complications to their characters that indicate a fuller depth of personality behind them.
But what is really striking to me is that the entire main cast, aka all of MARS and Po, have an obvious stake in the plot and personal goals outside of the main storyline. And we know their interests to some extent as well, both from prop and set choices and from how they set up scenes between them and Thame and/or Po.
This is kind of a continuation of the thought from last time, but a lot of shows with larger casts struggle with this, either with establishing their supporting characters as fully realized ideas instead of plot devices or with balancing out the need to do that with giving the main couple enough time to develop. Recently, I think My Golden Blood did a particularly bad job of giving the supporting characters any depth or personality, and it really contributed to the “bad NCT vampire AU” vibe of the entire show. I think a compelling enough main couple can distract from this—it’s why I’m still watching My Stubborn—but that of course comes down to what an individual person finds compelling.
Of all shows, Playboyy actually did a pretty good job with this, which I think is largely because it’s a thriller and you need to give all the characters more than one personality trait and motivation to increase suspense. I wouldn’t call any of the characters on that show particularly complex, but they all at least have goals and secrets, both of which are things that different professors of mine have pointed to as a way to create plot and complexity.
Currently Watching
My Stubborn: This week was one of the more egregious examples of “I don’t fucking know anything about these characters” because they gave Tai and Champ not one but two sex scenes (presumably because Jun and Sorn are in an off phase), which would be bad enough as is because Yoon is seemingly incapable of kissing, but is much worse because I literally couldn’t tell you a single thing about these characters outside the fact that they work together/with the main couple. Do they have hobbies? Interests? The girls are just as bad, which is so devastating because I liked the toxic yuri potential.
The most frustrating thing about this show is that it has a lot of interesting potential. I was right that Sorn has been in love with Jun for a long time and has been dealing with a combination of intense shame/guilt over the attraction and the fact that Jun takes any normal sign of flirtation as Sorn fucking with him, and I think that’s actually a very interesting dynamic. Sorn has so clearly been twisting himself into knots trying to figure out how to make this work and to deal with his own mess of feelings about Jun, but the show is allergic to giving us more backstory than what’s in episode one and the tiny bit from episode 8, so it’s like, okay but why is this so important to you. Flashbacks to them and Tai when Jun was younger would be so, so helpful.
Side note, I saw a clip where they were talking about how they landed on the half-ponytail look for Sorn because when Boat has his hair down, he looks too soft and gentle, and when it’s up he looks like an asshole, and the thing is that it’s so true. Excellent work, hair & makeup team.
Pit Babe 2: This show suffers from the other ensemble show problem, which is that it’s simply trying to do too much. We could easily cut the Sonic and North storyline from this season and not be missing anything aside from people who ship them a lot, and look, I’m there too but we just don’t need it. Alan and Jeff have pretty nicely settled into the normal supportive couple role, but even Jeff has some impact on the main superpowers storyline, so when we dip over to them it doesn’t feel like a distraction.
And I say this because I actually do think we could use a little more Kim and Kenta time. Specifically Kim has me like, boy, you’re ready to go back to Korea, why are you getting involved in this mess? I just don’t fully buy that he’s decided to ride or die for Kenta, even if the chemistry is working and I actually really loved how they got their first kiss with Kim wrestling Kenta down. I have to say that I did not buy Benz as the top in Long Beans, but here the vibe is working well.
Anyway, I’m pleased that I guessed what Willy’s power was even if it wasn’t exactly subtle. Unfortunately he’s wretched but I find him entertaining.
Boys in Love: I saw someone say omg bi rep re: Mon in this most recent episode, which is so funny to me because all of us watching went, that is a gay boy who had girlfriend because she asked him out and then they broke up because he’s gay. Like, the whole “we weren’t compatible” line plus his girl gang plus everything about Mon’s styling had me like, come on. OP saw the storyline as being about biphobia in relationships, whereas I was thinking about the SLUG (Smith Lesbian Until Graduation) thing (which is problematic and often biphobic, but there’s also a truth to the idea that some people only date the same sex/gender when there’s nothing else available and then reject that once they leave the environment, which imo is more about compulsory heterosexuality and seeing hetero relationships as more ~real).
(A show that actually did the biphobia in relationships thing in an interesting way recently was Sweet Tooth, but people didn’t like that and the Poon/View tease, but I thought it was unique that View’s character was also bi but was worried about her gf going back to her boyfriend for that reason, but it was all her projecting her own anxieties about bisexuality and how she’s been perceived/pressured before.)
Anyway, I really related to Shane’s total crash out in this episode. I too struggled late in high school to figure out what I would major in, because I knew for sure I didn’t want to do English even though that was my best subject, and I eventually failed out of the major I did choose and struggled to figure out what it is I actually liked. Shane is so real in that way—just pushing forward to get good grades without any goal, though he’s more diligent about it than I was. This contrasted with Kit finally figuring out something he wants to do was nice in this episode.
The Ex-Morning: I’m an episode behind, so I just watched the one that shows how they got together as well as them pretending to still be dating in front of Phi’s mom. We were talking about how fun it is to see antagonistic fake-dating, and I’d love to see more tbh.
Side note, it is crazy how well the “sweeping his hair to the center and giving him more dorky clothes” is working for making Singto look younger. It should absolutely not work as well as it does.
The Next Prince: Jimmy you’re a fucking liar. You said your NC scene wasn’t as extreme as Zee and Nunew’s. And maybe it wasn’t as long, but Ohm’s moaning alone had me covering my face. Their whole dynamic is so crazy, it’s something out of a porn manhwa or slavefic. And the implication is that this is a system this particular monarchy uses all the time??
On the subject of ensemble casts, this show has The CompetitionTM as a shortcut for giving the main characters motivations, but I also think they’ve been good at giving all of them more personal reasons for being invested. I get the impression that Ramil might partially want it so bad to protect Paytai, which would be devastating tbh. Ava obviously has the sexism issue. And then even Jay has something he’s working toward, with Calvin presumably just doing whatever his crush wants.
It’s funny because it does feel kind of late to introduce the protesters plotline, but I suppose it’s just a little over halfway through the series and it’s about time to complicate Khanin’s road to making his father king now that he’s gotten Charan to fuck him and he’s taking his training more or less seriously.
(Just want to put something here in case it ends up happening, but I was side-eying the childless king talking about his dead son? like omg did they swap Khanin with him. Did real baby Khanin die and Grandpa stole that baby prince to ensure he had an heir? Is there another secret heir??)
Reset: The pacing on this show is so wild because as of episode 3 all we’ve gotten to is Armin’s first audition and the show is only 10 episodes. Obviously we’re not going to get all the way to 2025 until maybe the last episode, but the extreme time jump has me asking more questions about how exactly Armin is supposed to stop himself from dying with 20-odd years of lead time. Are the dominoes this far out?
Finished
Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo: I hate to say this, but I mostly thought this was just fine. My general beef with this director is that her shows would be better and more effective as movies. It’s partially the scope of the stories she tells as well as how she tells them—I think her style works better for films.
I didn’t dislike this at all, but I thought it was a little uneven in how its story was told. I think it was interesting to tell a story about how abuse spills out and affects everyone, but it felt like it shied away from really getting into it when it came to how it affected Juyeong. Maybe it’s that I felt like Juyeong’s whole character was supporting Dohee with very little in return? I don’t know! I liked them and thought some aspects of how the relationship was portrayed were lovely and sweet, but I don’t know that I bought them still wanting to be together and I really felt like Dohee had more priority from the narrative. Which is fine, but feels more ? when the last four episodes really are from Juyeong’s POV.
Spon Corner
I have to shout out both The Next Prince’s constant Lolane shoutouts as well as the incredible blatant mini car commercial they managed to fit into the most recent episode, featuring dialogue that sounds like it was taken verbatim from an existing ad. The sheer brazenness of their sponcon pushes it into camp for me.
Anyway, I’m off to watch the final episode of Break-Up Service, which has the “male friend has secretly been pining for male lead and does something underhanded out of jealousy” trope that cropped up twice in kdramas like 2 years ago and usually feels homophobic, but because it’s Tay and Off, I mostly find it hilarious to consider. We’ll see how it goes, but Tay does do great villain.
urs,
hk